Can't believe I've yet to plug my new East Asia Tumblr on Google+! Friends, I'm chronicling my adventures and learning experiences in East Asia with behind-the-scenes photos from reporting and life, as well as video updates when I have time to do them. If you're a Tumblr user, please follow!﻿

For +TWiT fans and friends: If you caught my last #TNT appearance this week you saw my pal Adam Cole's crazy catchy goodbye tune he wrote from words in a Korean-English phrasebook. Here it is, and thanks to all the TNT viewers and listeners for being such an engaged and fun audience. ﻿

The Japanese company SoftBank said today they plan to sell humanoid robots to consumers starting in February. Their $1,900 robot product, called Pepper, will be able to work as a baby-sitter, nurse and emergency medical worker and will also be able to respond to human emotions, according to Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son.

So all the NPR reporters and producers are gonna start Facebook pages that our latest stories will feed to without us fussing with them. I am testing it out with the elise hu page. If you are interested in the stuff I cover, follow along with a like on FB.﻿

A political junkie since I was just a lowercase E, I covered the races and faces of Texas politics for most of my reporting career before becoming the digital editor of NPR's new policy coverage initiative, StateImpact.

In 2009, I helped launch the non-profit news organization, The Texas Tribune. Previously, I worked as KVUE-TV's state political reporter.

During my stint at KVUE, I also served our Belo Corp-owned sister stations, KENS-TV (SA), KHOU-TV (Houston) and WFAA-TV (Dallas), where I was a regular contributor to their Sunday morning politics program.

My work background includes time outside of Texas, too. I followed the political animals of South Carolina and their wild ways, covered the hurly-burly 2002 US Senate race between Jim Talent and Jean Carnahan in Missouri (Talent won) and spent much of my 5th grade year studying in great detail the presidential primary bid of once and future California Governor Jerry Brown.

I prefer prose over poetry and hobbies over habits.

Previously (and not in this order) I... lived with an Asian boy band (resulting in a lot of karaoke), worked as a teen model, picked up a journalism degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, consumed thousands of hot dogs, spent the strangest two years of my life in Spartanburg, South Carolina (where I actually covered a man-on-dog rape), got my homes and cars burglarized a combined four times, followed mom and dad on travels around the globe, interviewed Barack Obama in a bathroom, and in 2001, I started blogging when they were called "web journals".

That proved to be a prescient decision.

Oh, and I really, really don't like tarragon.

Bragging rights

I once survived the Washington DC DMV. This is no small thing.

Education

University of Missouri-Columbia

National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan

Basic Information

Gender

Female

Birthday

February 17

Other names

Elise Hu-Stiles

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